Heeling Here is Zuko practicing standing in a heel with the distraction of a dog he has never greeted walking about 15 feet away. This behavior was taught using the CCI (Cooperative Check In) method described on Karen Pryors clicker training website. The basics of the method are to focus teaching your dog to seek eye-contact with you. I like this method because to earn a treat the dog has to actually be looking straight at your face in addition to standing beside you, which means he cant be staring at an approaching dog, lunging or doing any other number of unpleasant walking behaviors. I and other handlers worked Zuko methodically through a list of distractions starting with easy ones, like a stuffed toy, to more difficult ones, like his favorite tennis ball. He learned that when he sees one of these coveted objects: 1) even if he goes towards it he wont get it, and 2) if he makes eye-contact with the handler he gets a treat. Now, he automatically looks at his handler when he sees a distraction -- yay! Because an unfamiliar dog is a really difficult distraction for him, watch how I only do a few repetitions of the behavior before turning him away from the distraction and rewarding him with a Free (go be a dog) command and a good sniff in the grass.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 17:55:06 +0000
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